Dustin Didham, left, and Dennis Angyal are featured in Elgin Theatre Guild’s current production of Agatha Christie’s classic whodunit, The Mousetrap, currently on stage at the Princess Avenue Playhouse. (Contributed)

But there’s now hope for a new funding model for four St. Thomas non-profits who contribute to community life — but who don’t operate arenas, baseball diamonds or soccer pitches.

On Monday, city council decided the four — St. Thomas Elgin Public Art Centre, St. Thomas Seniors Centre, St. Thomas Teen Centre and St. Thomas Cemetery Co. — shouldn’t have to come cap in hand each year for support. All but the seniors centre own and operate facilities for the community’s good.

Instead, council members agreed with Coun. Steve Peters, former alderman and mayor who returned this year to city hall after topping the polls in the November elections, that the four deserve to be treated differently.

“Recreation, in my mind, is not all about baseball diamonds, soccer pitches and arenas,” he said, positing that an organization such as STEPAC plays “a critical role” in meeting need for another type of recreation.

And at the end of a 100-minute session, council all but reversed a funding cut last year that forced the art gallery to reduce staffing and eliminate free programming, including a much-lauded initiative to support persons with dementia, through art.

Members also agreed that St. Thomas Seniors Centre, which operates a city-owned building, should be treated more like a city department.

And they recognized they don’t want to own a cemetery – the outcome under provincial law if St. Thomas Cemetery Company, which operates on a shoestring, were to go under.

Not all agreed with all. But at the end of the special council meeting, the vote was unanimous, awarding $245,000 in funding in seven grants from a $261,800 pot set aside during budget deliberations. Members also talked about a commitment to the Big Four for the term of council, offering stability for their financial planning.

Council held back $16,800 from its grant fund against anticipated needs. The city and the Railworks Coalition are in talks about that group of organizations that have taken responsibility for the community’s rail heritage. And a very great unknown is the future of pilot provincial funding this year for a mental health worker at St. Thomas police – a program that council members agreed must continue.

The art gallery — which this year celebrates its 50th anniversary, and which is custodian of a multimillion-dollar permanent collection of our art history — is to receive $70,000 in 2019 after council last year cut support by $11,000. Previous to that, STEPAC had received an unchanging $71,000 for a number of years.

“We’re very pleased with what the city has provided for the art centre,” Behr said. “It’s fantastic . . .

“We can go back to some of our previous programming.”

Monday’s grants:

STEPAC: $70,000 ($71,000 request; $60,000 received in 2018);

St. Thomas Seniors Centre: $50,000 ($60,000; $60,000);

St. Thomas Teen Centre: $60,000 ($100,000; $60,000);

St. Thomas Cemetery Co.: $55,000 ($60,000; $60,000);

Also:

St. Thomas Seniors Picnic: $3,000

Eat 2 Learn school breakfast program: $5,000

Light the Night Pinafore Park holiday lights: $2,000.

With the exception of St. Thomas Seniors Picnic, which received the $3,000 it asked, none of the groups council funded Monday was granted the full amount they requested. More than one council member said they had to share the pain.

Left unsaid in that, was the fact that council, itself, caused at least some of that hurt when it decided to reduce overall grants from $327,602 last year — even as it approved a 3.4 per cent increase this year in the city’s $127 million operating budget . . . an increase that city-owned recreation facilities bested.

Conversations for another time.

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Need more info? The session’s hefty 185-page agenda is posted to the city’s website at www.stthomas.ca. As is a live stream of the special meeting.

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During the meeting, Mayor Joe Preston offered council’s condolences to Steve following the passing last week of his mother.

Thanking the mayor, Steve paid tribute to Joan Peters in a special way:

“She’d be very mad at me if I wasn’t here tonight!” he said.

“I still listen to my mother,” he added with a smile.

Mayhem and murder.

Could there be a better way to celebrate St. Valentine’s Day?

Elgin Theatre Guild on Thursday at the Princess Avenue Playhouse opened its winter production of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap.

Quoth director John Allen: “Seven strangers trapped in an English manor by a blizzard. Tensions mount when a police detective appears on skis and announces that there is a murderer in their midst. Suspicions are cast and secrets revealed in plot twists and turns until the nail-biting finale when the murder is revealed.

Toronto-based sculptor Christine Dewancker says she has no doubt that her work, which has been exhibited internationally, has hometown St. Thomas flavour.

“The influence of industrial practices in shaping our environment is a major theme in my work, and certainly the role the railway and industry had in the history and organization of St. Thomas is encountered throughout the city,” she e-shares.

And certainly, her father’s work as now-retired city engineer and director of environmental services, and her folks’ environmentalism also has influenced. (They are John and Mary Lynn, a retired Catholic elementary teacher.) To now, we haven’t had a chance to see Christine’s work locally. Except for a mural she painted in grade school at St. Anne’s Catholic Elementary School. (She now holds an honours undergraduate degree in fine arts from Queen’s, Class of 2011.) But St. Thomas Elevated Park has announced that one of her sculptures is to be the sixth piece of locally connected public art destined for the landmark former Michigan Central Railroad bridge over Kettle Creek.

Faraway Nearby was commissioned for the Ontario Place Winter Lights Festival, where it currently is installed. After visiting the Elevated Park at Christmastime, Christine called on the unique venture.

“I think the Elevated Park project is a wonderful initiative and an inspiring use of an old railway line in St. Thomas” she says.

“The project is very ambitious and has the potential to place St. Thomas on an international stage, along with similar revitalization projects.”

Her sculpture is comprised of 12 separate towers of varying heights, each topped with a light, the park describes.

At its present location at Ontario Place, it relates to, and interacts with, the horizon line on Lake Ontario.

As part of its re-installation on the iconic MCR Bridge, Christine is to find new reference points to give the piece relevance and visual interest.

She calls it an exciting assignment.

“Of course I am thrilled to be a part of this historic project and to have my work in my home-town.”

Boosted by significant support from Doug Tarry Homes, the park expects to be fully open along the trestle’s entire length, by this year’s Elevated Picnic on Aug. 25, says spearhead Serge Lavoie. And Christine’s piece, and her credentials, will help promote the park, he says.

A town hall to update the community on the project is slated for 7 p.m. Feb. 26 at the Canada Southern railway station.